Another Path Taken
by Ryu Niiyama
Summary: Sophie Moore/Kelly Olsen. Life is a matter of choice and consequences moving ever onward heedless of the happiness or sorrow it leaves. Sophie Moore made a choice that cost her love once, and now in a somewhat more enlightened world will she finally find the path to love and success in a newcomer to the Crows?
1. Chapter 1

Another Path Taken

By: Ryu Niiyama

Pairing: Kelly Olsen/ Sophie Moore (eventually)

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Slowly but surely the Bat and the rest of his lackeys abandoned Gotham, but the Crows remained. That was why when Commander Kane offered Sophie a position with the Crows she accepted. That Commander Kane's tenacity reminded her of Kate's stubbornness was only an added bonus. Losing Kate had been a knife in her gut… if only she'd said no to those easy smiles and that softly cajoling voice; if only she'd been stronger none of this devastating pain would have happened. Kate had been a distraction, tempting her away with no regards to how important Sophie viewed her future. For Kate, the academy and the military was another escape from her loss and the new family that she didn't want. Sophie never begrudged Kate for how she coped, but she couldn't let her hopes and dreams become collateral damage.

She loved Kate…a part of her likely always would. However she couldn't build her future on love, and the military was not only her way out, it was something that she believed in. For all of its flaws, she wanted to be able to help people and to stop those that wanted nothing more than to hurt others; she wanted to serve and hopefully help build a better country than the one she was given. Was she wrong for lying and signing the confession? Certainly, and she never believed otherwise. However she wouldn't throw away everything she worked for on a hope that she and Kate lived "happily ever after". She couldn't weigh three years of love in Kate's arms against a lifetime shared with her family. The bitterness at giving up her dreams and her family would have eventually poisoned anything she and Kate could have built and unlike Kate, in the end Sophie would have been left with nothing.

Kate didn't know what it was to endure a mother's suspicious glances or to hear snide comments that weren't quite an accusation but that made the feelings locked away in her heart feel like damnation. Kate didn't know what it felt like to awaken to the stirrings of attraction and before she could even begin to explore them, discover that the world found them to be poison. Kate didn't know what it was to try to cut out her heart as surely as a limb and to live with despair of knowing that those that should have loved and accepted her most didn't even notice her bleeding out. Kate never had a crush sour to animosity as she raged that she wouldn't even have the right to try to know love's embrace. Kate didn't know what it felt like to listen to her parents condemn those that were different and then levy their expectations upon her. Kate didn't live in fear of losing the love and respect of the parents that she adored so greatly. Sophie understood that Kate carried a different grief and loss, but it was unfair to ask her to give up everything else to help Kate bear that grief. Kate didn't know what it was like to live in a world that still judged her by her skin color, diminishing her successes and emphasizing her failures.

Kate could afford to not care, to disregard regulations and drink her way through training. Kate could hop on her bike and ride away. Kate could cross oceans and climb mountains, because her father's name, her Aunt's family clout and her step mother's fortune gave her that freedom. She had a new family to replace the old, a new mother and sister that Kate had the luxury of ignoring despite how they cared for her. Kate never went to family reunions or spent weekends and summers with cousins that she loved like siblings. Even Kate's favorite cousin, Bruce Wayne had kept her at arms length; his love distant even if it was unconditional.

For Sophie, freedom and success came through hard work and gritting her teeth against the injustices that still plagued the world. The price of pinning her hopes on a chance would cost her the parents that bore and raised her, the family that she still sent letters to and called members of on a regular basis. It would cost her career path that would see her future provided for and her family assisted. That didn't mean that she never wondered "what if" on her lowest nights, or that she pushed away any chance at companionship to focus on her duties.

She swallowed the devastation and bitterness that she had been born just a little too early, that if she and Kate had been a decade younger, she could have lived in a world where their love could have been grudgingly but legally accepted, where she didn't have to place her future on the line and that one day she could have walked down the aisle to begin her life as Kate's wife and to have Kate as her own. Surely if her parents had only been a little younger, the changes in the world might have softened their resistance; it might have allowed them to eventually accept that Sophie was still their daughter and that Kate had made her happier than she'd ever been. Yet the path to those thoughts only led to madness…they were what they were and the world would not stop just because Sophie Moore fell in love.

She worked herself half to death to drown out waking dreams, when she could almost hear the sound of Kate's voice or the brush of her fingertips against her skin. She trained herself to exhaustion to outrun dreams where that endearing, lopsided smile and those sweet rare blushes were all for her. She couldn't bear to remember talks about a future shared or declarations of love. She channeled her frustration into the training room or the shooting range to drown out the ghost sensations of the feel of Kate's lips and taste of her skin and breasts and that beautiful, consuming flavor of desire that she'd once believed she'd die if she had to go without it.

Instead she paced like an addict, tracking Kate's whereabouts, praying for her safety and wishing that she could go to her, that she could beg and apologize until Kate bestowed her love once again. She wondered if there was some sort of addiction meeting for "the one that got away"; she felt like she deserved a chip after four years of abstinence. Yet she couldn't change what had been done, and faced with the same choice again she knew she would have to choose the same every time. So she let the moonlight bear witness to her tears and longing and when the sun greeted her she locked away her pain and yearning in order to do her part in making her home a safer place and protecting her family.

Not that even that was enough. She had earned success, but now her parents had lamented her being alone, fearing for her happiness and not realizing or caring that they would condemn her to have it. She had made her choice, her family for her heart, so she endured her mother's confusion and insistence on trying to set up on dates when she visited and never made sure to never visit on Sunday. She let her own faith die even as a part of her longed for its comfort, because she couldn't accept that she was somehow lower than a murderer because she sought love and passion in a form that looked like hers. She ignored the hurt in her father's voice when he didn't understand why she began to visit and call less, letting work get in the way when normally she'd push to maintain her tether to them. She didn't fault or blame her parents, they had a right to their faith, even if she didn't share it, but it hurt when it felt like their love came with a condition when all she wanted was to make them proud.

Still, she had their pride, even if it came at a cost. She didn't miss the way her father's eyes twinkled when she came home, and he stood a little straighter and invited her to play poker with his friends so he could brag and boast about her in his joy. She didn't begrudge the nicer house that she'd helped her parents buy or the fact that the money she sent home meant that her parents could actually afford to retire, after a low paying career for her mother and a 401k crash for her father meant that all their planning had become moot. She smiled when she received care packages from her mother, the pies and cookies hell on her diet but comforting reminders of home and a time when her parents were the most perfect and wondrous people in the world when she was little. She still enjoyed nights out with her cousins that she grew up with, all of them coming into their own and leaving their mark upon the world. She was at least grateful that she found men attractive enough that she could pantomime interest so that her cousins never noticed how she found them too large, too tall, too hairy and utterly lacking in a svelte but deliciously curved and tattoo riddled form that made her want to weep with longing.

It had to be enough that she was being groomed by Commander Kane to take a place of leadership within the Crows and a part of Sophie was grateful for the bond to the man that she had one day hoped would have become like family to her. She was somewhat grateful in their unspoken but commiserated pain as Kate's heartbreak had splintered more than just Sophie's relationship with her. She never told Kate that the Commander had spoken to her…that he'd shined a spotlight on the reality of the world for her, and yet he lost her in some ways just as surely as Sophie had. So she stood with him because he wanted to create a Gotham that didn't have to look to salvation in the form of vigilantes that had enough money and resources to provide an anonymity to disdain the law while seeding false hope. She stood with him because he wanted to create a Gotham where Kate didn't have to train with survival experts and place herself in danger. She stood with him because he gave her the means to protect Kate.

And maybe one day, one day that would be enough.


	2. Chapter 2

Another Path Taken: Chapter 2

By Ryu Niiyama

Pairing: Eventual Sophie Moore/ Kelly Olsen

AN: The paring is **not** Kate/Sophie but I will have Sophie process her residual feelings for Kate. (because Sophie really, really needs the chance to do that so she can let Kate go and move on properly)

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_**I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.**_

Her head still rang from the blow used to incapacitate her and she wondered for the fiftieth time why people didn't use knockout gas. After all she wouldn't be much use to the wonderland gang if she lost all her wits due to a concussion. At least she took out a few of her attackers before it all went south. She rolled her shoulders as best she could within the tight bindings and looked around. Next to her a table full of implements designed to torture and bludgeon glinted ominously, awaiting to be used. It was obvious that they wanted her to either get insider information about The Crows or they wanted to ransom her off to Commander Kane. Too bad for them, since Commander Kane didn't play those games and Sophie Moore didn't walk through hell and back to lose everything to a Lewis Carroll fetishist.

"Curiouser and Curiouser, awake already? And here I thought you'd welcome the chance to escape to you own wonderland of dreams…a place where you don't have to trip and tangle on your own web of lies."

Sophie squinted at the psychotic leader, a brief flash of confusion surging through her as the echoes of something familiar peeked out from the blonde woman's features. The peroxide blonde didn't seem to notice the lapse as she circled Sophie, twirling a butterfly knife like it was some sort of touchstone. The lunatic stalked towards Sophie and she reached out to grip the 2IC of the Crows' face in a bruising grip.

Such a perfect, perfect little bird you are dearest Sophie. You flutter and caw on command and you line your nest with the Crows blood money and your own lies. Don't worry, I'm not going to kill you…well at least not yet…you are far more useful to me alive…for now."

Sophie sneered and jerked away as much as her limited movement would allow, but it only seemed to amuse her captor rather than enrage her. "The Crows won't deal…you might as well as kill me now." Ashen, pallid features split in a grin and Sophie felt fear begin to pool in her gut. "The Crows might not, but what about Daddy Kane? You are his favorite after all."

Those words were the last thing she heard as her captor drew back and pulled a wooden paddle from a nearby table and cracked it against her temple.

When she found herself jostled awake some indeterminate time later it was to find that she was living in her worst nightmare. She was going to die, not defending her city or her country but instead at the whim of a psychopathic murder. The actual end result was only slightly worse. Kate was back and Sophie was fairly certain she was masquerading as the bat, trust in the Crows had been absolutely eroded and they had a traitor on the books for years.

If Sophie was pointedly ignoring the fact that she's nearly died and was now once again sharing a city with the ex that got away, she figured no one would actually call her on it.

Until someone did.

Sophie was pouring over reports, scrambling to figure out where Alice was and Kate's connection to Batman hoping she could act in time to keep her reckless former lover from getting herself killed. That was one thing she could do, compartmentalize and protect. She would stop Kate from doing something stupid, she would help get Alice and Dobson put away for life and she would ignore that she nearly plummeted to her death twice in less than 24 hours. At least that was the plan until a knock sounded at her office door. Assuming it might be Commander Kane, she beckoned the person to enter only to be surprised by a newcomer that she hadn't met.

Officially, Sophie would blame it on still being out of sorts from her kidnapping, but as her guest walked in, she forgot to breathe. She felt herself fall into warm brown eyes that seemed so inviting and kind even as they darted about in curiosity and a sheepish but exuberant smile blossomed as her guest stepped fully into the room.

"Sorry, but I wanted to introduce myself and I got a bit turned around here. All of these halls look the same." Sophie rose and automatically took the hand that was offered to her, absently noting that the grip was firm but not overpowering. "I'm Dr. Kelly Olsen, I'll be joining the medical team. Pleased to meet you." Sophie nodded as her tongue was caught on the roof of her mouth, the part of her that was still dazed by the sight of a beautiful woman granted temporary freedom from exile and firmly grabbing hold of Sophie's higher motor skills. An eyebrow quirked briefly in response from her guest and Sophie slammed her military training over her flustered emotions keeping a neutral but moderately friendly expression as she smiled back.

"Good to have you aboard, Dr. Olsen. I'm Agent Moore, the 2IC of field operations here. I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I hope I won't have to see you often in a professional capacity."

Dr. Olsen hummed good-naturedly in response, her eyes flitting over the reports that lined Sophie's desk and for a moment Sophie felt the hairs on the back of her neck raise in alarm. There was a sharpness behind the Doctor's warmth that reminded Sophie of some of the commanders that she'd worked with; the few that managed to somehow meld a soldier with a gentle personality rather than becoming hard and brittle. Dr. Olsen's smile increased and Sophie found herself lulled slightly by its brightness. "None, taken Agent Moore. However, medical treatment need not always be reactive, and at the very least a friendly face is always nice."

The Doctor didn't pry, but Sophie felt like she wanted to, still she respected the boundaries placed upon the conversation and Sophie internally commended her awareness. "That's fair. I do hate to be rude Doctor Olsen but-" Dr. Olsen nodded at the universal cue for a dismissal, seeming to take it in stride. "Of course, I'm still making my rounds. It's a pleasure to meet you Agent Moore and I look forward to working with you." The slightly shorter doctor nodded politely and turned and exited, her strides precise and quiet and Sophie was certain that woman was military. She decided she'd have to ask Commander Kane about it later…when they weren't hunting a madwoman across Gotham.

Exhaling noisily, Sophie slumped back into her chair, looking at the grainy footage of the caped person that most of Gotham thought was a man. She squinted at that picture, recalling the adrenaline sharpened memory of being cradled in strong but lithe arms and pressed against curves that neroprene kelvar weave couldn't quite disguise. That would have been enough to alarm her, but it was the eyes, pale viridian and the jawline and mouth still familiar to her even after years of abstinence, that let her know what she had to do.

Kate was throwing herself into the fire, with no thought of who else would get burned…only this time against a lunatic like Alice…the flames this time were deadly rather than heart breaking.

She had to stop her, keep her safe, no matter the cost.

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R. Niiyama

7/2020


End file.
